* Vladaar takes a can of worms off the shelf, and then shakes the can up good before opening a can of worms! *

What mud owner would truly care enough to take someone to court over it, even if the
builder used that area that the builder created anyway. Not any that I can think of,
except maybe a pay to play one. That is doubtful too, unless your giving them some
type of competition. Face it diku and other licenses are violated all the time and because
it is a mud they don't want to spend money taking someone to court. I mean it could
happen, but it hasn't that I know of. Yah there is the spirit of the license I agreed to
not use the area I created for that mud, but other then bad mouthing you, I don't see
them taking someone to court. There would be too many things to have to prove as
well. Did you show your builders this policy prior to letting them build, when was the
policy put into effect, can you prove it, lots of crap that a lawyer could tear apart. So
to me the whole "arm chair" lawyer attempts over these issues are Moot.

People keep calling this a "hidden" part of some rules, but the OP said that he included that in his speech about new builders and whatnot.

If he didn't obscure this was his policy, and some one decided to build anyway, then so be it. If he were hiding this from builders, or not even mentioning it then denying them their areas, then yeah, it would be insidious. Keep in mind I've been the victim of "Hey, your MUD is closing, can I have my areas?" "No. They're the MUD's." "Well crap…" It's not fun, but what are you gonna do?

Any builder that cares to have a copy of their work should keep a .txt or .doc or something similar of their area descriptions as they write them. Then they have their work, and they don't have to rely on someone else in order to be provided that work. It was my own fault for not taking this approach when I started building for that MUD that didn't let me have my areas when he shut down for good.

As Vladaar said, if you "agree" to not let your areas be used anywhere else, but do it anyway, then what? Nothing. I'm not a fan of breaking licenses or anything else, but it sounds like most instances of "You build for us, it's ours now" isn't legally binding anyway.

And since the area format of an area isn't exactly the builder's work, I don't agree that the Admin should be obligated to provide it in that form anyway, which is one reason why I think if a builder wants to be sure they have their work, they should keep track of it themselves. I imagine any coder worth their salt probably keeps copies of anything they do on their own computers as well as on whatever shell they are coding on…

For the record, I won't remove areas by request… you build an area for my MUD, it stays there. If you want a copy of your area, then that's fine, I'll even provide you the .are file (for all the good it will do with the ton of mods we've made to our area formats anyway) so you have your work. The relative ease (and common sense) of copying your descriptions into a notepad would make -not- providing the builder the area file kind of pointless anyway, and I would prefer to have a good relationship with any of my builders, past or present. Nor am I afraid that my game will somehow lose something if another MUD has some of my areas.

Regardless though, if an Admin is upfront about this policy, and the builder agrees to it, then so what? If I agree to let someone shoot me in the face, are you going to blame the guy with the gun, or me for agreeing to something so stupid to begin with?

It is hidden, because it only comes up in his speech. And you only hear that speech **AFTER** you agree to build for him.

He may only include that as part of his "Welcome Aboard" speech, but nonetheless, you haven't actually begun building to lose. At that point, you've still got nothing to lose by changing your mind and leaving.

It's lame in a crooked used car salesman kind of way perhaps, but it's not like he's fucking you at that point.

EDIT: Also, whats-his-name said the information was also in the helpfiles. RTF(builders)M before you begin? It sounds like he's giving them plenty of warning. What's he supposed to say? Yo Builder! I'm really happy for you and imma let you build, but imma keep ur areas for all time.. ALL TIME!! (and not let you have them).

Well, you are correct that he says it before assigning an area and at that point there is nothing to lose.

Although, it isn't in the help files. It is said once and only once while in the process of this over load of information.

who cares moot anyway. Don't like the guy don't build for him, don't want to
obey his can't use the area thing, don't. It doesn't matter, this is all rambling
about something that has no legal basis.

I read wrong about the helpfiles. Oops.

Either way, I guess I just don't care. The way it works is right there in the text for the would be builder to read. Is it shady in a car salesman sort of way? Probably, but I don't care. I backup any work I contribute to a MUD and don't ask for it back years later if I decide I don't like the owner anymore. Just … meh.

So? Since when has legal basis had ANYTHING to do with what people talk about around here, ESPECIALLY in regards to copyright/IP law? This is MudBytes. I'm gonna ramble, bitch, moan, cry, and complain about everything for a much lengthier duration than necessary because that's what we do here.

That's when you tip your hat, provided it's awesome enough to have the "tip" social, and click disconnect. A good builder looks about and asks questions about building for a MUD before joining. If the owner deceives the builder, I don't believe the builder has any obligation to build for him. He can accept the terms or not. A good admin knows he gets good work out of people who what to build for them. There's really no harm in him being silly. The block button has strong kung fu.

I'm not going to speculate about the legal position, here, but it seems to me that, from a moral perspective at least, the MUD owner's conduct is not that unreasonable. It's really not healthy if a builder can, at any time, delete a large, long-standing functional area of the MUD just because he happens to have got into a strop. Asking for a copy of his zone is reasonable as far as it goes, but what's he going to do with that copy? If a large zone of your MUD suddenly shows up, unaltered, in a rival MUD, I can see that would be pretty aggravating (and I think it would be VERY shoddy behaviour on the part of the builder).

Compare this with an author demanding that his publisher give him a copy of his book because he's going to give it to a rival publisher and have them publish it as well. Legally that position may be distinct from what we're discussing here, but morally I think it's analogous. Similarly with a programmer doing a work for a company - you can't have employees demanding copies of everything they've written since they joined the company and then handing them over verbatim to rival software companies. There are good moral reasons why the law does not permit them to do this - and I think, on the whole, the same should apply to a builder submitting work to a MUD: he's building for the MUD, not for himself. The fact that he happens not to be paid for doing so, shouldn't matter, he's still working for the MUD.

Again, I'm arguing from a moral, not legal, perspective.

Builders (and other staff content generators) agree by email with their terms, which as I stated are different then players.

You stated the above, then followed up with "Our builders (and other content providers) follow pretty much the same", implying that the above terms of service apply to the regular players. It's debatable whether or not an email is sufficient to make the agreement legally binding (and at least one case in which it wasn't*), but simply claiming exclusive rights in your terms of service certainly isn't legally valid.


* Ballas v. Tedesco, 41 F.Supp.2d 531 (D.N.J. 1999): Plaintiff has not provided this Court with evidence of a signed writing granting him an exclusive license to market the sound recordings. Instead, Plaintiff argues that the parties exchange of e-mails evidences the agreement. The exchange of e-mails, however, does not satisfy the statutory requirement of a written instrument signed by the Defendants.

He's claimed ownership over the builders areas, then shut down the mud, flushing their hard work down the toilet. I really don't find that reasonable, and it's a brutal lesson for the poor people who have spent countless hours working on content for the mud.

I can understand the reason behind a non-exclusive licence, as a means to protect the mud from having its content chopped away by disgruntled former staff. But I also think the builder deserves a certain degree of protection (or compensation) for their hard work, particularly considering the short lifespan of most muds.

The bashing about not providing copies is odd as well, a builder can make their own copy if they desire to, though it'll involve a lot of copy/pasting.

The way I see it, if a builder uses OLC the actual area file is the property of the MUD in question, a builder has no rights to it, like I have no rights to the MB database just because I got a bunch of posts.

That's exactly my stance on the matter.




Unfortunately, that's pretty much par for the course in the MUDing community. I'm sure 95% of the MUDs that go belly under take the areas with them, and you have a whole host of people that's poured countless hours into their areas and now have nothing to show for it. I agree it's a brutal lesson, and I do have sympathy for them, but ultimately, it's a lesson they need to learn one way or the other. It's happened to me. I took steps to prevent that after the fact.

Sure, but in most cases it's at least partially the builder's fault for not keeping backups. What I'm talking about (when I say I find it unreasonable) is when the mud owner tries to prevent the builders from using their areas elsewhere even though the mud is dead and buried. That's just pure spite.

Yep. That one word popped out as a problem. It's not standard. If you look at commercial games which accept user content, you'll find "non-exclusive" in their TOS.



I agree with this. There is nothing at all in the legal code that would suggest that it's the responsibility of the recipient of a work to create copies for the author.


Edit – to back up the claim that it is not standard… and likely not standard because it's not legal without a signature.

Ballas v. Tedesco was a work for hire Copyright case, and was pre-ESIGN (Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act).

We are doing licensing (not reassigning Copyright) of content, and are post-ESIGN.

As I said, it's debatable whether or not an email is sufficient to make the agreement legally binding. As far as I'm aware Ballas v. Tedesco has not been overruled, and I've yet to see any case law applying E-SIGN to copyright transfers. It's also irrelevant whether you're transferring the copyright or exclusive rights, as both have the same (in writing and signed) requirement.

But just adding it to your terms of service is not legally valid.

The ToS and staff content agreements were written by a lawyer. I will take their word over yours.

As to what is "irrelevant", that is just an opinion of yours, and has no legal basis. Just adding it to your post does not make it correct.